Based Off a Dream
by Omegathyst
Summary: When Eleanor discovers something big about Tahani, she goes around the neighborhood for answers. But thanks to a secret scientist, Eleanor finds herself to be the source of Tahani's problems. An alternative retelling to Season 1 of The Good Place, and an AU where Jason is actually a genius assisting Michael. As the title suggests, this is based off a dream I had.
1. The Revelation

"Tahani's pregnant."

Chidi's eyes widened, and he muttered something about a stomachache. Eleanor ignored his typical Chidisms, for something much bigger was unfolding in this weird neighborhood of the afterlife.

"H-H-How does somebody get _pregnant_ in the **Good Place?!"** Chidi exclaimed.

"I'm guessing how anybody gets pregnant, did your parents-"

"They told me what the bird and bees are, Eleanor!" Chidi snapped. "I don't _only_ know philosophy. Who's the father?"

"I'm trying to figure that out right now." Eleanor said. "It wasn't you?"

"Eleanor, I'm your fake soulmate. Why would I go out of my way to have sex with someone else?" Chidi asked.

"I dunno, why would you spend eternity not getting laid because of me?" Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Seriously dude, you might as well cut off your di-"

_"Eleanor!"_ Chidi hissed. "Back onto the subject, did Tahani tell you this?"

"Yeah, she had this soft look on her face, which was obviously weird because we usually hate each other's guts."

"Tahani doesn't hate your guts." Chidi interrupted.

"Whatever, _I_ hate her guts and her beautiful ample bosom." Eleanor scoffed. "But she asked if I remembered anything from Glenn's party a few weeks ago, and I told her no. She frowned and gave me the news. When I asked her if she remembers who she forked that night, she didn't answer me."

"So Tahani doesn't know who got her pregnant?" Chidi asked.

"Seems like it." Eleanor sighed. "It's okay, I'll ask Jianyu. He's her soulmate after all."

"Then why didn't you ask him fir-"

"See ya, Chidster!" Eleanor yelled as she left their yellow house.

In the short walk it took for Eleanor to get from Point A to Point B, Eleanor felt a strong headache coming on. She heard a male voice talking in her head, but she couldn't make out any of the words he was saying. His tone sounded...determined, fascinated. As she approached the door to Tahani's mansion, the voice ceased talking altogether. She knocked on it once.

Tahani opened the door, staring at Eleanor with the frightened dark brown eyes of a lost deer. Eleanor's heart melted as she pulled Tahani close and...wait, what the fork?

Eleanor slowly moved away from the hug she didn't plan on giving, and Tahani continued to look into her. And to Eleanor's surprise, there was no inch of hate towards the graceful skyscraper in front of her. Only concern, and another feeling she couldn't understand.

"Did...you have any luck?" Tahani asked.

"No, but only because I was an idiot and I asked my soulmate first." Eleanor shrugged. "What if Jianyu got you preggers? It would make sense, unless you're scared that it's someone else, and you don't want him to know?"

"Y-Yeah, it's best that he doesn't know yet." Tahani looked away.

"Don't worry, caramel. I'm going to go to Michael and sort this out." Eleanor reassured Tahani with a squeeze of her hand.

Eleanor skipped down the sidewalk, feeling a glow from talking to Tahani. Eleanor liked to think it was a sense of pride, doing a good deed by hunting down the father of Tahani's unborn baby, and making sure Tahani was taken care of.

Huh, maybe she _did_ deserve to be in the Good Place after all.

She kept skipping down the sidewalk till she was far from Tahani's mansion. Then, she called Janet.

"Yes, Eleanor?"

"Take me to Michael's office, _now."_

Janet immediately linked arms with her, and they both teleported to the room that Eleanor woke up in. The familiar "Everything is fine." in green letters was still on the wall.

Janet walked into Michael's office and closed the door. Just as Eleanor sat down on the couch, Janet poked her head out.

"Come in, Eleanor." Janet spoke, still holding a cherry grin.

Eleanor stood up and walked into the office, freezing up. Michael wasn't here, but standing in the office was Jianyu in a..._lab__ coat?_

_"Jianyu?"_

"Jason Mendoza." He corrected her, and Eleanor recognized the voice as the one that was in her head.

"Tahani's pregnant."

"Yeah, I know." Jason had a clipboard and a pen, and he wasn't looking at Eleanor. Instead, he was writing notes in the clipboard.

"How could you be so casual about this? Dead people shouldn't even be _able_ to get pregnant!" Eleanor snapped. "The father of her child could be _anywhere!"_

Jason stopped writing and looked up, finally grabbing Eleanor's attention. The tiniest hint of a smile graced his lips.

"You _really_ don't remember what happened at Glenn's party, do you?" Jason asked.

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Eleanor groaned. "Keep being cryptic with me, and just tell me!"

"Okay, if you insist." Jason smirked. "Although to completely understand what I'm about to tell you, I must formally introduce myself. I'm Jason Mendoza, personal assistant and trusted scientist of our architect Michael."

Eleanor had too many questions pertaining to who Jason was, but she didn't speak. She had a quest to help Tahani, and Jason was the key.

"Well, you were right in a way." Jason began. "Nobody before Tahani has gotten pregnant in the afterlife. Well, with a real baby anyways. But I wanted to test out if you'd have sex with Tahani. I knew you would, so I wanted to try an even wilder test. You see, I had implanted male genitals on you. You didn't know I gave you them, but you woke up on this chair and left without question."

"The first thing you did was go to Glenn's party at Tahani's mansion." Jason grinned. "You marched right up to Tahani and told her what new body part you had. You walked away to get a shrimp cocktail, and she was blushing from ear to ear. It would appear that my test would be a success. You see, in those genitals I gave you, I ingrained magic in them. Not only would it disappear after one night, but you'd lose memory of that night too. And, you would impregnate any woman you slept with."

"You're telling me t-that-"

"Yep! After most people had left the party, Tahani pulled you aside and kissed you right on the mouth. And the rest, is history." Jason broke eye contact to continue writing on his clipboard, still grinning.

Eleanor wanted to do a lot of things: ask questions, scream for Michael, ask Janet why she was still in the room smiling. But instead, she lifted her closed hand and punched Jason in the jaw before storming out of the office.

Quickly, the fire in her chest gave way to a cold fear of being the father (or mother?) of Tahani's baby. And Tahani knew! But she didn't tell Eleanor, allowing her to go on this terrifying journey where she found out Jianyu's identity...

Mind spinning, she made her way to Tahani's mansion.


	2. The Talk

_You motherforker, you thought you could quit your prim and proper afterlife to fork me. You thought that no one would realize your true colors and you could move on without me?! Your soulmate isn't even forking real, you air-headed beautiful swan..._

Eleanor hesitated at her last thought, holding her closed fist in the air a few inches away from Tahani's door. She wanted to be mad at Tahani, but was she really? If anything, she felt frustrated that the two had sex, and Tahani didn't seem as thrilled about it as Eleanor had hoped. Did she regret it?

_It might not be personal, I'm pretty sure the mood would be ruined for me if __I__ got pregnant._

Eleanor pushed herself to knock on the door.

Tahani opened it, and Eleanor pushed herself into the mansion.

"I figured out who the 'father' is, it's me, isn't it?" Eleanor said.

"T-That's silly, Eleanor. How would you even-"

"It's the Good Place, we can have big swinging dinks if we want to." Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Thing is, though, I wasn't given a choice. Your_ fake_ soulmate placed one on me."

"Fake? Eleanor, you got bees in your brain." Tahani looked away. "Jianyu has been nothing but good to me. I don't know who told you that he was fake-"

_"He did!"_ Eleanor snapped. "He told me that his real name was Jason Mendoza, and that he worked for Michael."

"And I suppose you have a perfect soulmate, right?" Tahani sneered.

_"No!_ I'm not even supposed to be here!" Eleanor admitted. "...wait, please don't tell Michael."

"I knew something was up. You're just some street cat from the Bad Place." Tahani gasped. "Did you place a demon baby in me?! Oh the _horror!_ Jianyu will never want to speak to me again!"

Tahani fell dramatically on the couch behind her.

"You're able to believe_ that,_ but not that your soulmate is fake?" Eleanor shook her head. "Whether we like this or not, you got a baby growing inside you. I'm pretty sure they don't have abortion clinics here-"

_"I __would__ never do that to my baby!" _Tahani wailed.

_"Our _baby." Eleanor corrected her. "Neither Jason or Chidi will make this situation any easier, this baby needs to be raised by_ both_ parents."

"What're you suggesting?" Tahani asked.

"That we go to Michael, and tell him that we...spent a _night_ together and you got magically pregnant." Eleanor explained. "He'll think that only_ true_ soulmates can connect like that, and since no one's gotten pregnant here before, he'll have no other basis to go off of."

"Will you tell him that we had...y'know."

"No." Eleanor sat on the couch next to Tahani. "I'll tell him that we just hung out all night after the party was done. We can assure him that we haven't had any sex with our fake soulmates, and then he'll let us be together. For the baby if nothing else."

"You really think he'll buy that?" Tahani asked.

"He'll have to, we're the only ones to create a baby in the Good Place. If that doesn't scream 'we're true soulmates,' than I don't know what will." Eleanor replied. "Are you on board with that?"

"Don't know if I have any other choice..." Tahani sat up, placing her hands over her belly.

"Well, there's one more thing." Eleanor added. "If this _arrangement _between us is going to work out, you can't lie about things like who the baby's father is."

"I didn't lie, I just..."

"Chose not to say anything? That's lying by omission, I learned that from Chidi's stupid ethics class." Eleanor said. "As soulmates, there'll be no dishonesty baloney, got it?"

"Got it."

"Good. So, now that we got that out of the way...was I good?" Eleanor looked at Tahani.

_"What?"_

"Was my technique with the new equipment good? Or did I pork you senselessly like a teenage boy?"

_"Eleanor!"_ Tahani felt heat creep throughout her cheeks, looking at the _paintings, _the _stairs. _Anything _but_ Eleanor.

"What? It's not my fault that you're the only one that gets to remember the mind-blowing sex we had!" Eleanor huffed. "...I mean, it was something like that, right?"

"I suppose it wasn't half-bad." Tahani got up, offering her hand in Eleanor's direction. "C'mon now, if this 'Jason' really did cause this, we don't have a moment to lose."

Eleanor stared at Tahani's refined doe-like hand, taking note of her glittering lavender fingernails. Was this real? Did Jason inadvertently give Eleanor a smoking hot mama for a soulmate?

_No, no. This is just a setup to drive us batty. But does Michael know?_

Eleanor wasn't prepared to answer that question. After all, she needed to be on Michael's good side right now.

_"The Good Side." Ha, I'll have to tell Tahani that one later._

As soon as the two women left, someone stepped out of hiding.

"Janet? Take me to Michael's, there's a lot we need to tell him."

"Yes, my dear Jason."


End file.
